The Carnival
by S.K. Millz
Summary: Hold your breath.
1. Zack's Blood

Zack's Blood

* * *

So I've been feeling a little stressed lately.

Woody just laughed and smacked him across the shoulder. Want a beer? he asked.

Zack stood frozen. You're sixteen, you have your own place, _and_ you have beer? Somebody pinch me.

Yeah. Well. You want one?

Just one.

It's not really my place, Woody said, showing Zack into the basement. But my mom and my stepdad are always out of town, so it feels that way sometimes.

I didnt know mobile homes even had basements.

Mine does.

Piled high from concrete wall to concrete wall were huge boxes of unmarked videotapes and old film reels. An ancient projector stood squarely in the middle of the room, facing a patch of bare wall. From the rafters hung dozens of long brown strips of undeveloped negatives.

What exactly do you do down here? Zack asked.

Woody was stooped and fumbling inside the tiny refrigerator. Hope P B R's okay, he said.

I'm no connoisseur.

Well Zackary. Truthfully speaking, a great many things go on down here. He rose, cracked the seal on the lukewarm beer and handed it over.

Examples?

Dont you worry your blond little head about it.

Fine. Dont tell me. Between sips Zack's eyes were covertly scanning the negatives. After a while he said: It's got something to do with the war, right? Vietnam?

Woody shook his head. Liberia, he said. The first civil war. Not the second. My stepdad's studying it for his dissertation.

Zack choked down his beer. You know, I'd heard horror stories, but this stuff isnt half bad if you just hold your breath.

Welcome to my world.

Glad to be here. Now stamp my passport so I can get the fuck out.

Woody followed Zack out into the front yard, a twenty-foot strip of crabgrass adorned by a single sorry oak tree.

When'd you get your driver's license?

Zack fished his keys out of his pocket. I dont have it yet. I'm still on my permit. But no one has to know, so long as I dont get pulled over. He rounded the front of his mother's black Subaru Impreza, hopped into the driver's seat, fired up the engine and rolled down the passenger's side window.

Where you headed? Woody asked, poking his head inside.

Doctor's office. To get a physical. For basketball.

Basketball, Woody repeated dreamily, his eyes rolling up into his head. I'm no good at basketball.

Yeah. Well. It's my game.

Alrighty Z-Dawg. Good luck. Stop by anytime.

You got it, Woodchip.

The car rolled backward, then did a U-turn and sped away into the sun.

* * *

He was right in the middle of an old Popular Mechanics article about Nine-Eleven when the nurse entered carrying her clipboard and in a positively booming voice announced his name to the entire waiting room. An array of jealous eyes immediately swung in his direction. He pretended not to notice.

How are you today, sweetie? asked the nurse, guiding him down the hall.

Just groovy, thank you.

She shut him inside a tiny windowless square of a room and asked him to roll up his shirtsleeve, then she fastened a thick black cuff to his bicep and squeezed the little rubber stopper until his veins stood out like noodles and checked the reading. Cocking an eyebrow she snorted and shook her head and took another reading. He could feel his arm going numb. The nurse frowned and swapped the band out for a new one and took a third reading. She scratched her head.

Excuse me Zack, she said, relieving his arm. I cant seem to get a good fix on your blood pressure. I'll be right back with the doctor.

Okay, he said, watching her go. She swung the door shut behind her but the latch did not set all the way and at once the door creaked back and stood open a sliver. Craning his neck he could see out into the hallway. A slim rectangle of light. The nurse stood behind a cluttered desk cradling the office phone.

Doctor Wharton, he heard her say. Something's screwy with the sphygs in one-fifty-one. They're not measuring this kid's B P… No… No it's not that… The numbers are just too high… Alright… Alright… Thank you Doctor. I appreciate it.

She hung up the phone and stood with her arms folded, thumbing her nostrils. When she noticed Zack peering out at her she smiled weakly and glided over and slid the door shut the rest of the way.

Alone in his cell Zack sat studying the bright flamboyant wallpaper, the colorful cars and trucks and hugely embellished rainbows. It was very cold in there. He touched the back of his hand, the thick blue veins crisscrossing underneath his skin. After a while the nurse returned with Doctor Wharton and a third sphygmomanometer.

The doctor nodded hello, then pushed back Zack's sleeve and adjusted the band. It inflated with a low intermittent wheezing.

The doctor frowned deeply. Does this look familiar? he asked, turning to the nurse.

Twiddling an uncapped pen between two fingers she leaned over the doctor's shoulder, eyed the meter and shook her head yes.

What's wrong? Zack asked as the band came off.

Dont worry, sighed Doctor Wharton. It's just our equipment. Follow me.

This time they shut him inside a slightly larger room. One dark shuttered window along the outer wall. Everything labeled biohazard. No wallpaper, only smooth white paint. Hooking his legs he sat down on the padded examination table spread with thin butcherpaper while the doctor rummaged in the closet. Before long he reemerged towing a small cart and on top of the cart was a blank telescreen monitor together with an arrangement of wires, a transparent tube and a long scary-looking needle.

Remind me, Zack—how old are you?

Fifteen, he said slowly, staring at the needle.

And about how much do you weigh?

I dont know. One-ten?

The doctor nodded agreeably. You look pretty sturdy, he said. I think we should be okay.

He asked Zack to extend his arm, then he dabbed at the crook of his elbow with a swab of alcohol and readied the needle. Zack looked away. A few seconds later he could feel the telltale pinprick and out of the corner of his eye he saw the tube flash a bright shade of red. The doctor left the needle in for a long time. No sound save the whir of the monitor, his heart pulsing in his temples. The nurse sat down, then stood up, then sat down again. Finally Doctor Wharton removed the needle and cleaned and bandaged the wound. An assortment of numbers and letters and all sorts of strange glyphs were flashing rapidly across the monitor.

Doctor Wharton suddenly coughed. Come look at this, he said, gesturing for the nurse.

She emptied her seat and stood studying the screen for a moment. Then she said: Oh my God, and placed a hand over her mouth.

Zack was trembling. What's wrong? he asked again.

The doctor shook his head confusedly, pointing to a small number near the bottom of the screen.

Zack squinted at the monitor. Seven hundred over six hundred fifty-five, it read. He wasnt sure what that meant.

What does that mean?

I dont know.

That cant be right, murmured the nurse, retaking her seat.

Is that my blood pressure?

The doctor placed a hand over Zack's forehead. Why dont you lay down right here, he said, patting the cold end of the examination table. I've got to make a call. Nothing serious. I'm sure it's just a mistake, but you can never be too cautious about these things. Right? His voice sounded hasty and rushed and full of dread.

He ruffled Zack's hair and made for the door. Then his head caved in like an old pumpkin. A starburst of red. The door swung wide. Two men with guns entered the room and opened fire on the nurse. A broken quarter-circle of blood splashed the wall behind her. She didnt make a sound. Zack threw up his hands instinctively. The men were dressed in khakis, olive-colored polos. Official-looking. Black badges. They wore holsters at their waists. Dark shoes. Dark hair. One of them with glasses. They ziptied Zack's wrists out in front of him and yanked him to his feet and ushered him out into the hallway.

There were dead bodies in the lobby. Men, women, children. Little streaks of blood everywhere. Already the place had begun to reek. He spotted the magazine he'd been reading lying upturned in a puddle of red. The doors were in front of him and then like portals they were behind him. The parking lot a deserted spread, parallel to a rushing highway. They shoved him into the cabin of a dark blue S U V, then locked the caged partition dividing the seats and motored off down the road.

As they departed a squirrel bounded down from the curb and stood chewing in the space the truck had occupied, watching them go.


	2. Gravity

Gravity

* * *

The truck was not plush. Everything plated, barred, blocked off, cramped, narrow and uncomfortable. Outside the city passed dull and gray and granite against a matte-like sky.

Zack laid down. He could feel the blood squeezing through his veins, heavy as melted chocolate. His heartbeat slow and arrhythmic. From time to time the men up front would sneak a backward glance through the caged partition. They were watching him.

He had a thousand questions for them. Questions without answers. Questions not worth asking.

After a while the truck merged onto a second highway, then circled around an off-ramp and pulled into a school parking lot. Zack lifted his head to read the sign. Chickasaw Woods Elementary. He recognized the name. Site of the Boys' Regional Championship game four years ago. He'd picked a fight with a power forward twice his size and spent the entire second half cowering on the bench with a broken nose. His team had lost by seventeen points, going one for fifteen in the fourth quarter. Zack remembered crying quite vividly, the warmth of his mother's arms around him. He could still feel it—that warmth—in the floor of his stomach.

The truck motored to a halt. Tucking their guns under the tails of their shirts, the driver and his companion quit the vehicle and shuffled off toward the main building. Zack watched them go.

Alone in the truck he fumbled with the plastic ziptie binding his wrists, to no avail. With some effort he fished his cellphone out of his pocket and held it to the ceiling, probing for reception. When not one bar would show he rolled up his pantleg and slipped the phone into his sock for safekeeping. The clock in the dash read three thirty-six. He thought about breaking a window, but the glass was triple-reinforced, tough as nails.

A few minutes later the two men reappeared on the far end of the parking lot. They had a small boy with them. They were walking very slowly, none speaking. When they reached the truck they stuffed the boy into the backseat with Zack and slammed the door home and retreated out of sight. Zack scooted over to make room. The boy couldnt have been much older than ten. His hair was messy and brown and he had a slim gaunt face. His teeshirt was black and yellow striped and his cheap canvas sneakers were all muddy and untied.

The boy looked at Zack with a face that was devoid of fear and said evenly: Hi. I'm Sam. Who're you?

Zack stared at him for a long time, then he told the kid that his name was Zack.

Zack, huh? Is that _just_ your name—or is that who you are? The kid folded his arms, almost smugly. My mom sez people who introduce themselves that way—my name is so-and-so, I go by such-and-such—really dont know who they are deep down.

Zack wasnt sure how to respond to that.

You look lost, the kid said.

Zack's eyes lit up. Do you know where they're taking us? Who are these people?

Them? The kid craned his neck. They're just worker bees. They wake up early. Run errands. Big and small things. They can be gruff at times, but it's just their nature. Then he smiled longingly and said: Arent you excited to go home? I hear it's a lot better now. Better than it was, at least.

Up front their captors were clambering noisily into their seats. The engine revved.

Where's home? Zack asked. Where are we going?

Pick up your brother, grunted the driver, steering toward the highway.

Sam looked excited. You have a brother? Me too!

Zack took a deep breath. He took another one.

At the moment they were only skirting the outer rim of the city. They'd need to cut through town to reach the Tipton. The highway snaked through an empty field that had been fenced off for development, then along an airstrip with winking red lights adorning all the runways and hangar bays, little white vans zipping dutifully back and forth. A row of killdeer sat perched upon the fence.

Ahead was a stoplight. The truck slowed to a halt in the middle lane, fourth vehicle from the front.

Who's your brother? Sam asked.

His name's Cody.

Now, is that _just _his name?

I dont know, Zack muttered. You'd have to ask him.

Shut up, barked the driver.

Zack sat forward. The dashboard was vibrating. Just a soft tremolo at first, a shudder passing from bumper to bumper. Then a tremendous booming filled the air and everything was shaking. The driver cupped his ears.

Sam had his nose pressed to the window. Will you look at that, he mouthed. Zack jostled for position, unsure of what sight to expect… some giant rampaging monster, a tornado, a flying saucer…

Outside all was darkness. A long crucifix-shaped shadow looming over the intersection. It was not a flying saucer, or any of those other things. It was a plane, a huge commercial airliner, coming in low. Too low.

In a smooth and weightless arc its red-flecked nose tipped downward. It had no landing gear and, from the look of things, few windows. Enormous twin rotors, snapping through powerlines like they were rubberbands.

Zack put on his seatbelt. The driver and his companion were scrambling to unlock their doors. They werent fast enough.

The impact was deafening. Not an explosion: a great metallic crashing, without beginning, middle or end. Commuters poured from their vehicles, tried to run, were crushed instantly. A schoolbus went sailing through the air. Zack's ears began to ring. With a terrible silence the nose of the plane cut a jagged line across the median. No sparks. No fire. Just metal and glass and huge airborne swatches of concrete. Sam looked back at Zack and smiled. Beyond him the square windowpane framed the tidal wave of noise and mineral and steel rushing toward them. It was almost unreal.

The left side of the truck collapsed inward. It rolled twice, pancaking the cabin. One final banging. Then everything stopped. No sound save the dead and vapid hissing of the engine.

Zack opened his eyes. He was dizzy, seeing blood, but he hadnt moved. His hair was matted to his face, bangs hard with blood. He unfastened his seatbelt and immediately fell upward, into what was left of the ceiling. He righted himself and sat there blinking. Sam's legs were in his face, dangling from nowhere, slightly aslant. Motionless. He could read the label off his Converses. The windows were shattered but not broken in, one with a small hole in it. He kicked at it with his heel until it grew wider, wide enough to poke his head through. Outside nothing but grass and dirt and scattered chunks of debris. He forced a shoulder through, then an arm. The glass buckled like hard plastic, clawing at his skin. He didnt care. He squeezed his waist through, then his legs.

Clear of the wreckage he rolled flat onto his back and lay panting in the grass, eyes turned toward the dark smokelogged sky, heart thumping heavily. He touched his face and grimaced at the bright red streak it left behind. A breeze that smelled like rain pulled neatly through his hair. Still dizzy, he staggered to his feet and dragged himself out from under the shadow of the truck.

The rubble sprang up like a monument before him. Shapeless. Pitiful. It was as if there had been no airplane. A great creaking lump of metal, gasoline trickling down in long shiny marmalade beads. All a mess. Here and there a tire, a steering wheel, a bumper, a door. The road strewn with pebble-sized glassbits. Ashblack smoke rising in thick D N A patterns.

Paramedics were on their way. Police in their little white Tauruses. He wheeled around slowly. The ground shifted underneath him. His feet were all over the place. A bleary swinging that refused to quit. It was as if his eyes had been drawn back into his head. An odd floating sensation. Like he'd guzzled an entire case of Woody's P B R.

He was already several blocks from the wreckage before he began to take note of the street signs. Nichols Road. Westwood Drive. Pinehurst Boulevard. Woody did not live far from here. Maybe he could hide out at Woody's for a while.

He cut across an empty lawn, a pretty tulip garden, between two houses. A dachshund snarling through a chainlink fence. A row of sprinklers steadily chik-chik-chikking, sending up long arcing whips of foam that hocked and spat in his face as he darted by. He could hear sirens wailing in the distance, a dark police helicopter screaming across the sky.

Before long he was standing in Woody's front yard, under that drooping leafless oak tree, lungs heaving in and out, eyeing the place like an orphan without a home. He wiped his face on his tattered sleeve and climbed up the front steps and let himself in.


	3. Z or C

Z or C

* * *

The front hallway was all aclutter. Clumps of dirty clothes and books and plastic dishes strewn about the floor. He went on tiptoe, stepping gingerly over a broken lamp.

Woody? he tried to no response. His voice was tight and froggy.

In the tiny living room an ornate wallclock ticked soundlessly toward four thirty. The T V was on. Some afternoon talkshow—muted, forgotten. Tracking mud through the floor he wandered into the kitchen and picked up the landline, but there was no dialtone, and his cellphone fared no better.

He peeked into the bathroom to get a look at his face. There was a thin cut above his left eyebrow and a slightly deeper one along his right cheek. He splashed some water on his face, clearing away the blood, then washed his hands and went out.

Woody? he tried again. A light was on in the basement, a soft white glow. The stairs creaked under his weight as he made his way down, each louder than the one before it.

His eyes took a moment to adjust to the darkness. Woody's stepfather's film projector stood whirring in the middle of the room, a spent reel whipping loosely around the back spool, a ghostly white square gracing the wall opposite. At the foot of the stairs he stumbled over a big lump. It was Woody, and he was dead. A single gunshot to the back of the head. His blood black and oily under the low and flickering light.

Zack sat in the floor with his friend. His heart weighed a ton. He felt an immense guilt, but no tears would come.

After a while he got up to switch off the projector.

On the table next to the projector was an open cardboard box. The label read: Zack's Blood, in what looked like Woody's handwriting.

He froze. At the bottom of the box were two film reels identical to the one currently doing rounds in the projector. He rewound the spool and played it back.

Fuzzy leadertape gave way to a black title card that read in plain white lettering:

Property of N P F L  
Monrovia 1990

The film began with a montage of sorts. The First Liberian Civil War. Fleeting snapshots of the devastation. Gray sky. Yellow dirt. The city of Monrovia in ruins, the dead heaped in unceremonious piles, guarded over by mobs of snarling flies. A motorcade passing slowly through town, trailed by a truck crammed with stone-eyed, gun-toting children.

Zack turned up the speakers.

A dry riverbasin appeared. One by one the children clambered out of the truck and slid before the camera to testify.

We are fighting for our country, for our families, for a New Liberian Democracy, said one boy of about sixteen.

Moments later another took his place. Sam Doe is a filthy rat, he said, glaring through eyes that were almost pink. He is a tyrant and a traitor to his people. We will crush him and his followers. And when they are all dead, we will pledge allegiance to a New Liberian Democracy.

A third said: A New Liberian Democracy is essential to procuring the rights of the people. That is why we must fight.

We know what we want, said a fourth. And that is a New Liberian Democracy.

The parade of faces continued in this manner for some time—all, it seemed, reading from different pages of the same script. The flow was interrupted only once by a boy with a rare white face whose shaggy blond hair and bluegreen eyes, shaded beneath the brim of an enormous olivedrab helmet, stuck out like products of some alien world.

The boy, not unlike the others, was about Zack's age. He wore a bandaid below one eye and his cheeks were flecked with dirt. He shouldered his carbine and began to speak. Zack listened to him speak.

We're here to lay the foundation for a New Liberian Democracy, he said. Sam Doe chose the path of violence, not us. The blood of the innocent is on his hands, not ours.

And then it was over. The screen went blank. The reel fluttered and unraveled. Zack stood watching it spin. He thought about what he had just seen. Then he unloaded the reel and reached into the box and cued up the next one.

Property of N P F L  
Monrovia 1991

That same boy was now sitting on his helmet inside a cramped and unfurnished tent, eating from what looked like a bowl of mucky soup. It was night. A small oil lamp slid in by his bare feet, casting a dim orange light over his features. The bandaid was gone from his cheek. He smiled halfheartedly.

Slowly the camera panned away, past a boy who could have been his twin, who lay on a cot with his boots and all his gear still on and his head tipped back, fast asleep.

They were the only white faces in the tent.

The camera swung back toward the first boy.

Zach, tell us what it is like in America, came a low voice from behind the viewfinder, speaking in calculated English.

Zach raked a hand through his hair. I've never been, he said.

Then it was morning and they were all out taking target practice at the foot of a huge promontory. Some wore bandanas to soak the sweat off their brows. The pop of their M 16s cracked mutedly through the speakers.

Moments later Zach's twin appeared, stooped by a wall of sandbags, palms clasped tightly together. As the camera approached he peeled back his thumb, showed off his find. Trapped in there was a skinny green praying mantis about the size of his middle finger.

A lot of people keep them as pets, you know, he said bleakly.

The rebels were hauling an old man out of his office. They spat on him and kicked him in the ribs and dragged him thrashing through the street. He wore a collared shirt, prim tie and khaki dresspants. The procession ground to a halt in the middle of the market. The old man was shackled to a gate. He gazed fearfully into the camera. A crowd was gathering, children laughing and pointing, women bearing huge wicker baskets on their heads or in their arms.

A young rebel entered the circle and spoke to the old man in Bassa. Zach appeared behind him gripping a long serrated knife that shone almost white in the high afternoon sun. He knelt by the gate and cut the old man's eyelids off, one by one.

Again the reel spun loose and again Zack replaced it.

Property of U S Department of Defense  
Tipton-Hillcastle Research Superfund  
11 October 1995

In front of a bookshelf stocked with voluminous titles like _Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment _and _New World, New Mind: Moving Towards Conscious Evolution_ sat a man in gray whose thin eyeglasses and scraggled beard formed the gist of his face.

He spoke directly to the camera: The civil war in Liberia proved an excellent opportunity—not only to deploy these new subjects, but to actively track, trace and monitor their physical and emotional progress. By any stretch of the imagination, these were not normal children. At least not in the sense that they were conceived, carried, birthed and raised by acceptable parents. They were manufactured—literally—in petri dishes, in a laboratory in Colorado, by scientists with eugenical ideas, by high-ranking military officials and, yes, well-connected politicians.

They were developing the west's first super-soldiers. Genetically engineered, usually in pairs, labeled alphabetically, raised in government dormitories, sheltered from everything but their bedroom windows, their caretakers, their approved curriculum and television—because television, of course, shelters itself.

On a strictly scientific level the results of the Superfund were nothing short of groundbreaking. Of the original sixteen, eleven subjects survived beyond infancy, ten were deployed in live combat situations and three were recovered at the end of the conflict. By this time enough empirical data had been compiled to merit a dramatic increase in funding.

And the data was incredible. These children were not only as much as ten percent stronger, faster and more intelligent than their peers, their bodies resonated at a higher vibrational frequency and their blood ran at a significantly higher pressure, meaning their anatomies were tendered, specifically, for heavy, even exhaustive, use.

In 1992 the second round of experiments began with thirty-four new subjects. As of this recording, twenty-nine have survived beyond infancy.

The reel spun away with a clatter. Zack clawed through the box in search of more, but there werent any more. He stared at the box, the hastily scrawled label: Zack's Blood.

It had been him in those old reels. Somehow, impossibly, him, cavorting around in Africa two years before his birth. Cody too.

He had entirely no recollection of those things. Not the faintest flicker. His earliest memories were all of his brother, his mother, Maddie, Moseby, London, the hotel, basketball. His heart beat faster. He wondered: Were even those just forgeries?

He closed his eyes and sank to his knees and clutched the back of his head and squeezed until it hurt, but still no tears would come. He gazed across the room at Woody and he thought about Woody and he thought about his day and about the plane crash and the men with guns and Sam and Doctor Wharton and the nurse and all the others, everyone else—how they were all dead and he, the only constant, had somehow escaped through. He thought about his blood, the blood he shared with Cody. He listened for it, felt it pounding in the veins of his neck, as if it wanted out.

He staggered to his feet and made his way upstairs.

The bathroom, like the rest of the house, was cramped and untidy. He stood in the mirror and splashed cold water on his face. His cuts dragged a warm fading red. In the drawer below the sink were a pair of scissors. He wet his hair and cut it shorter. Shorter than it had been in years. Then he washed the clippings down the sink and peeled off his ragged clothes and ducked inside the shower. The water was hot and full and it clung to his body like sweat. He watched the drain swirl pink and frothy at his feet.

When he was finished he dried himself off and bandaged his face and scoured Woody's bedroom for fresh clothes, making do with what he could find.

Woody's phone was dead, and it seemed his own was perennially out of range. He left the house with a handful of change and invested in a dilapidated payphone two streets over. He dialed home.

His brother picked up after a couple of rings.

Put Mom on the phone, Zack said.

Where are you?

Just put Mom on the phone.

Some rattling ensued. She greeted him frantically: Zack? Where have you been?

I'm fine, Mom.

That's not what I asked.

I'm at Woody's.

You know there was a plane crash uptown this afternoon? I must've called your phone a dozen times. You had it turned off?

Zack shifted the receiver to his other ear. I know, Mom. I'm sorry, he said.

Was my blood pressure not high enough for you already?

It wasnt my fault.

Of course it wasnt. It's never your fault, she huffed. I want you home, Zackary.

Zack took a deep breath. We'll see, he said.

What do you mean we'll see?

I just have one question for you, Mom.

She fell silent.

He asked her who she loved more: him or Cody.

That's absurd, she snorted.

Be honest.

I love you both the same. You know that. Now get your butt home, mister.

Not until you give me a straight answer, he said flatly.

He could hear her breathing through the phone. Zack, what's wrong?

It's a simple question.

It's absurd, she repeated. Listen. I'm sorry if I came off a little harshly. I'm not angry. I'm just tired. I was worried about you. I thought you might've gotten hurt.

That's not what I asked.

Please come home, sweetie.

Answer the question.

I cant.

It's as simple as A or B.

You cant expect a mother to be able to choose between her children.

Z or C.

Zack, you're scaring me.

Just answer the fucking question, he snarled.

Suddenly all was quiet. He imagined Cody listening in on the bedroom phone.

Alright, she said finally, in a voice that was on the verge of breaking. You want a straight answer? I cant give you one. But I will say this.

She paused to collect herself. Zack closed his eyes.

Your brother would never pull a stunt like this… disappear without a trace and scare me half to death. Your brother isnt that insensitive. He'd use his head. Behave himself like a normal fifteen year old. But you're not your brother. You're nothing like him. You've got someone else's genes in you.

Zack hung up the phone and slumped to the sidewalk. He'd heard enough. He had his answer.


End file.
